


higher than soul can hope or mind can hide

by qed (perzimon)



Series: dream a little bigger [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Inception AU, M/M, akaashi is the world's best point man, bokuto is the world's best forger, resisted the temptation to name this wake me up inside (can't wake up), they shoot themselves in dreams to wake up, who wears tom ford, who wears whatever the fuck he wants
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 21:30:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6770947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perzimon/pseuds/qed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is where I've chosen to lay my affections, Akaashi thought fondly, as he pulled out a Glock and shot Bokuto between delighted golden eyes, before turning it on himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	higher than soul can hope or mind can hide

Akaashi awoke with a suppressed start, as if he were shocked to see the light of another day but disciplined enough to catch the noise in his throat that might have made it his last. The military would be proud, if they ever decided to stop hunting him down and start appreciating him for his aptitude. With his eyes still closed, he evaluated his surroundings. A measured breath through his nose drew in the faint smell of green tea (from Yuexi, Akaashi thought, one of his favorites), dry cleaning, almond croissants, and the clean and sheer scent that he had come to associate with one Bokuto Koutarou.

He had once tried to identify the source. His first suspect was Bokuto's hair gel ( _mousse_ , a voice suspiciously reminiscent of Bokuto’s chimed in. _Hair gel is for middle school boys with frosted tips_ , it sniffed, without a shred of irony), but the hair gel ( _mousse!_ ) smelled like lavender and mint. Then he thought it might have been the cologne Bokuto wore, and began his perusal of fragrance websites. At some point, he realized that that in all his experience with Bokuto, which was admittedly extensive, he had never seen Bokuto put on cologne. Then he decided that eighty-three hours (and 16 minutes, he thought a bit miserably) was eighty-three hours too many to think about the way Bokuto smelled (he allowed himself the 16 minutes), that really it was just a matter of professional curiosity and his responsibility as a point man to know these things, and Akaashi was nothing if not a consummate professional, but when curiosity and going around and surreptitiously sniffing your coworker collided, even he conceded that some mysteries were better left unsolved.

Detecting nothing out of the ordinary, Akaashi relaxed, letting his limbs settle blissfully loose in the comfort of his own bed, in his own room, and enjoyed a rare moment of silence. He found peace in having personally set the traps to the door, and was certain that there wasn’t a soul in the world who could crack them. Maybe Kenma, he conceded, but even he would need at least 3 hours and would certainly have made enough noise to have alerted Akaashi to the intrusion. The unidentifiable scent wafted back as aggressively as the source himself, if smells could be aggressive, as if to say “ _then why am I here? You certainly forgot to give Bokuto a key. I’m sure it slipped your mind_.” It sounded reproachful.

Akaashi rolled over onto his side and buried his face into a pillow. “Go away,” he groaned. The scent lingered.

A moment later, he sighed and swung his legs off the bed and started towards where he thought Bokuto was. Sitting quietly, if Akaashi could have nice things. Maybe even cleaning out the fridge, now home to weeks-old cheesecake and a truly indecent number of macarons that Bokuto had been briefly enamored with and left to rot the last time he visited and that Akaashi, in an unprecedented show of sentimentality, couldn’t bring himself to throw away, even as the former turned noticeably green. Akaashi sympathized; Bokuto grew on you like that. Letting himself get drawn into his domestic fantasies just a little longer, Akaashi imagined Bokuto Koutarou, master forger and art thief with a heart (and curiously enough, eyes) of gold, wrapped in an apron, whistling a tune while masterfully launching golden-brown pancakes into the air with a flick of his wrist. Maybe he put chocolate chips in, and brought that maple syrup from America that Akaashi liked best. Maybe he even set the table, with those dumb owl print napkins that he had bought and presented to Akaashi as a cat would a mouse, that Akaashi had taken and promptly dismissed to continue doing research and could Bokuto-san “stay focused, please”, but had mysteriously and inexplicably ended up in Akaashi’s kitchen, neatly tucked in the second drawer from the right. Maybe he — 

was in the process of razing half of Akaashi’s apartment to the ground, waving around a broken handle (that Akaashi was certain had belonged to his perfectly seasoned cast iron pan) in one hand and attempting to put out an impressively sized grease fire with the closest liquid available—Akaashi thought (desperately hoped) that the golden arc in the air was apple juice—with the other, expression equal parts abashed, exhilarated, and utterly remorseless. _He’s so beautiful_ , Akaashi thought, watching Bokuto throw flour onto what had rapidly evolved into an inferno. As it exploded, Bokuto finally looked over, eyes gleaming. Akaashi immediately retracted any previous comparisons between Bokuto and mold. Bokuto Koutarou was a force of nature and Akaashi was only too willing to be incinerated. _This is where I’ve chosen to lay my affections_ , he thought fondly, as he pulled out a Glock and shot Bokuto between delighted golden eyes, before turning it on himself.

When Akaashi awoke, he let his eyes stay closed for a moment. He plucked the PASIV line out of his vein delicately, breathed in the smell of lavender and mint, and enjoyed a rare peaceful moment, blocking out Bokuto’s offended screeches. 

***

“So, how did you know that was a dream? What gave it away?” Bokuto asked, while they walked to lunch. His stomach rumbled loudly and he shot Akaashi a pointed look. The latter, after ignoring Bokuto for 3 minutes, had insisted on taking stock of every pot and pan in his house, making Bokuto clean out the fridge, and giving an impromptu lesson on fighting fires. That Bokuto insisted he was reaching for baking powder, not flour, had sent Akaashi on a second, more spirited diatribe about baking supplies, which trailed off in a rather charming tangent about whisking techniques that Bokuto would have been very happy to listen to Akaashi elaborate on in that soft, melodic voice at any other time, were he not starving. 

“Hm? Oh, the green tea,” came Akaashi’s response. He was looking down at his phone, slim thumbs flying across the screen. Bokuto peeked over and saw the words “appreciate” and “notice” and “who” and “Bokuto-san, stop peeking”. Bokuto looked away.

“What green tea, Akaashi? I’m pretty sure that was apple juice that I threw on the fire, which, by the way, was very deliberate. I knew that it would, uh, splatter like that. I also planned the fire. That you walked in on, it was a part of the whole thing, the idea. Definitely _not_ an accident, because who sets croissants on fire? Not me, that's who. Not by accident.” 

“No, I mean the green tea when I first woke up. I smelled green tea. And dry cleaning. And —” Akaashi flushed red and made a noise that would have been a choking sound in any mortal throat, but came out of him as a prim _ahem_ , “—Bokuto-san. Were you trying to incept me? In a single dream level? Wait, were you trying to incept me into giving you a key to my safe house? Did you try to wine and dine me into being roommates?”

Bokuto looked appropriately chagrined, reaching a tanned arm up to run his hand through his hair. It came to rest on the back of his neck. Akaashi tore his eyes away from the sight of Bokuto’s sleeve stretching around his bicep. “Well, Akaaaaaaashi, it was worth a try! But you still didn’t explain about the tea. I know that it’s your favorite so what's the problem? Do you always carry a gun in your pajamas?" he accused, jabbing one long finger into Akaashi's chest. "Do your pajamas even have pockets?” He paused. "Do you wear a holster with your pajamas?" he asked, more to himself than anything else.  _Well_ , Bokuto reasoned, _he probably dreamed the gun up, since we were in a dream._ Still, Bokuto didn't put it past Akaashi to have a gun holster in the blue silk that he favored for his pajamas. Flushing, he carefully stowed the idea of Akaashi and his silk gun holster into the recesses of his mind for later examination, and made a note to himself to avoid sneaking up on his friend when he finally did get that safe house key.

Akaashi’s mind was too busy soaring—Bokuto, who painted miracles onto canvas, but couldn’t memorize kanji to save his life (indeed, they had been on a job together where Bokuto very nearly ordered a hit on himself due to a kanji misunderstanding); who has perfected unraveling other people’s mannerisms, but is himself a flurry of contradictions; who is alternately sometimes dim but so very bright, remembered the precise smell of Akaashi’s favorite tea, plucked in the mountains in Yuexi, China, well enough to recreate it convincingly in a dream—to register Bokuto’s pajama-induced crisis. “Sorry, Bokuto-san. You recreated the smell of it very well, but I don’t keep that kind of tea in that particular safe house. So I knew immediately that I was in a dream.”

Bokuto immediately latched onto the most important part of Akaashi's response. “Okay," he crowed, "since I did ‘very well’, lunch should be on you!”

“Bokuto-san, the point of going under wasn’t to see how well you could create the smell of my favorite things, uh, my favorite tea. Nor was it to practice inception. On me. If I remember correctly, which I do, you wanted to practice dream architecture, then forgery. Then work on militarization, if time permitted.” Akaashi glanced down at his watch. “Speaking of time, look sharp. We’ve been summoned.”

On cue, a sleek black car pulled up to the curb next to them. Bokuto cast a longing glance in the direction of the ramen shop just around the corner before opening the door and gesturing for Akaashi to step in. He stared at the red tips of Akaashi’s beneath his mop of tousled black waves before registering his words: “Bokuto-san. I’ve ordered yakiniku to be delivered to meet us there. Please get in the car.”

Bokuto’s shout of joy echoed off the apartments and Akaashi, keenly aware of the 24 countries that had arrest on sight warrants out for one or both of them, couldn’t bring himself to care. _Let them come,_ he thought, as the car sped away.

**Author's Note:**

> lmk in comments if i should clarify things about the inception's canon  
> i forgot that not everyone had a frankly unhealthy and unhinged obsession for it  
> _(:3」∠)_


End file.
